CHAPTER XIV

CLOTHES, FISH, AND SLAVES

William Learned Marcy, Secretary of State to President Franklin Pierce, was a man of solid common sense and of plain democratic habits. Born in 1786, he fought in the War of 1812 and captured a British flag. He returned from the war to his career of lawyer, edited a daily newspaper, became a judge of the Supreme Court of New York, next, a United States Senator, and was three times Governor of New York. In the Mexican War of 1846 Marcy was Polk's Secretary of War, and showed high administrative ability. In 1853 Franklin Pierce made him Secretary of State. Laurence Oliphant described him as "a genial and somewhat comical old gentleman, whose popularity with his countrymen seemed chiefly to rest on the fact that he had once charged the United States Government fifty cents for repairing his breeches.'"1 Marcy's capacity as an administrator and an international lawyer was to be fully employed.

He first set about to reform the diplomatic dress of his country's representatives abroad. Originally, American diplomatic agents had worn what is usually described as "the simple dress of an American citizen." By the time the Treaty of Ghent was being negotiated, a regular uniform was being recommended by the State Department: "A blue coat, lined with white silk; straight standing cape, embroidered with gold; buttons plain, or if they can be had, with the artillerist's eagle stamped upon them; cuffs embroidered in the manner of the cape; white cassimere breeches, gold knee-buckles; white silk stockings, and gold or gilt shoebuckles. A three-cornered chapeau-bras; a black cockade to which an eagle has been attached. Sword, etc., corresponding." On special occasions, the hat was to be decorated with an ostrich feather, the uniform was to have more embroidery. The representatives of the United States were not going to appear as inferior to the repre1 L. Oliphant, Episodes in a Life of Adventure (1887), p. 51.

sentatives of the monarchies of Europe. One is reminded, in reading all this, of George Washington and his coach with six creamcoloured horses.

In the more democratic days of President Andrew Jackson, the State Department recommended a more simple uniform: black jacket, instead of blue, no cape, breeches black or white; but the chapeau-bras, eagle and sword were retained.1

Soon after Marcy became Secretary of State he issued a circular to all the United States representatives abroad, ordering them, in order to show their respect for republican institutions, to appear, whenever practicable, in the simple dress of an American citizen.

Except at the Prussian and British Courts the American Ministers had no great difficulty in carrying out Marcy's recommendations about uniforms, within the latitude that he allowed them. Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort, thoroughly kindly, good-natured and unpretentious, were nevertheless, like all true bourgeois, very correct in their demeanour. They insisted firmly upon conformity with their standard of respectability. Accordingly James Buchanan, the American Minister at London, found himself in a difficulty: he had a great respect for the Queen and did not wish to offend her. Moreover, he personally rather liked the beau monde of fashion. On the other hand, conforming to Marcy's views, he determined not to wear gold lace or embroidery at Court. For the opening of Parliament in February, 1854, the diplomatic corps had to appear, according to the Lord Chamberlain's regulations, in full Court dress. Therefore Buchanan did not attend the ceremony, and his absence aroused a great deal of comment in the journals. The Times wrote with restraint (although its facts were incorrect), but the Chronicle, in its remarks, passed all the bounds of decency:

There is not the least reason why Her Majesty . . . should be troubled to receive the gentleman in the black coat from Yankee-land. He can say his say at the Foreign Office, dine at a chop-house in King Street, sleep at the old Hummums, and be off as he came, per liner, when his business is done.3

1 See Rhodes, op. cit., I, 507-8.

2 Edward Everett to Sir C. Vaughan, April 9, 1837 (Vaughan MSS., All Souls).

Quoted by Rhodes, op. cit., I, 512, from citation in the New York Evening Post, April 8, 1854.

Buchanan took no notice of this insolence, and solved his difficulty by arrangement with the Master of the Ceremonies.

On February 24, 1854, he was able to write to his niece, Miss Harriet Lane, as follows:

The dress question, after much difficulty, has been finally and satisfactorily settled. I appeared at the levée on Wednesday last in just such a dress as I have worn at the President's one hundred times. A black coat, white waistcoat and cravat, and black pantaloons and dress boots, with the addition of a very plain black-handled and blackhilted dress sword. This to gratify those who have yielded so much, and to distinguish me from the upper court servants. I knew that I would be received in any dress I might wear; but could not have anticipated that I should be received in so kind and distinguished a manner. Having yielded, they do not do things by halves. As I approached the Queen, an arch but benevolent smile lit up her countenance as much as to say, you are the first man who ever appeared before me at court in such a dress. I confess that I never felt more proud of being an American than when I stood in that brilliant circle, "in the simple dress of an American citizen." 1

Buchanan explained to Secretary of State Marcy: "In the matter of the sword, I yielded without reluctance to the earnest suggestion of a high official character, who said that a sword, at all courts of the world, was considered merely as the mark of a gentleman."

There were more troublesome things than dress which rippled, although not seriously, the smooth surface of Anglo-American relations. Such things were claims of the nationals of one State against the Government of the other-claims for wrongful seizure of cargoes, for unlawful exacting of Customs duties, and such-like. Some of these claims were as old as the War of 1812; some, such as that arising out of the slave-ship Creole in 1841, had in their time created considerable excitement. On February 8, 1853, Buchanan's predecessor, Joseph Reed Ingersoll, Minister of the United States in Britain, and Lord John Russell, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, signed at London a Claims Convention. All claims of corporations, companies, or private individuals, of one State against

1 Life of James Buchanan, by George Ticknor Curtis (1883), II, 114. Cp. Rhodes, op. cit., I, 512

2 The slaves on board the Creole had mutinied and forced the ship's officers to take the ship to Nassau in the Bahamas. There, being in British jurisdiction, nineteen were held for murder and the rest set free (McMaster, History of the People of the United States, VII, 54).

the Government of the other, which claims had been presented since the Treaty of Ghent and had remained unsettled, were to be referred to two Commissioners. These Commissioners, one to be named by the President of the United States, the other by Her Britannic Majesty, were to meet in London, and to subscribe a solemn declaration :

that they will impartially and carefully examine and decide, to the best of their judgment, and according to justice and equity, without fear, favour, or affection to their own country, upon all such claims as shall be laid before them.

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They were also to name an Arbitrator or Umpire for cases in which they should happen to differ. The Commissioner appointed by the United States was Nathaniel G. Upham, judge of the Supreme Court of New Hampshire. The British Commissioner was Edmund Hornby, a barrister, later judge of the British Consular Court in the Far East. He is still remembered as the author of an interesting plan for an international court of arbitration." 1 The Umpire chosen by the two Commissioners was Joshua Bates, a native of Massachusetts, and a partner in the English banking firm of Baring Brothers. He was also the father-in-law of Sylvain van de Weyer, Belgian Minister to the Court of St. James.

The Commission began its labours in London on September 15, 1853, and completed them on January 15, 1854. It had made awards in favour of British claimants, amounting to 277,102 dollars (£55,420), and to American claimants, amounting to 329,734 dollars (£65,947). The expenses of the Commission were defrayed by a rateable charge on all the sums awarded, but the salaries of the Commissioners (each receiving £620 per annum) were paid by their respective Governments: the Umpire's remuneration was shared. The work of the Commission deserved the remark of Mr. Seward, that it had "the prestige of complete and even felicitous success.'

"2

On June 5, 1854, Lord Elgin, Governor-General of Canada, and Secretary of State Marcy signed at Washington a Reciprocity Treaty concerning Fisheries, Customs Duties and Navigation.

Many facts, and perhaps some legends, have come down to posterity regarding this famous Act. Laurence Oliphant, who is responsible

1 Moore, International Arbitrations, I, 401. Hornby's work is called An International Tribunal, published in 1895.

'Moore, op. cit., I, 391.

for the "bibulous " account of the negotiations of the Treaty of Washington, was a brilliant journalist and traveller, who was taken by Lord Elgin as his secretary on the Mission of 1854; the post consoled the active young man for not getting to the Crimea during the war with Russia. The British Mission consisted of Lord Elgin, Francis Hincks, Prime Minister of Canada, Captain Hamilton, Aide-de-Camp to Lord Elgin, and Laurence Oliphant.

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The British diplomatists arrived in Washington on May 22, 1854, a day which, as it afterwards turned out, was pregnant with fate to the destinies of the republic, for upon the same night the celebrated Nebraska Bill was carried in Congress." 1 It was the height of the Washington season, and the arrival of the British diplomatists" imparted a new impetus to the festivities, and gave rise to the taunt, after the treaty was concluded, by those who were opposed to it, that it had been floated through on champagne." 2 Lord Elgin at once established good relations with Washington society. The Americans became sufficiently familiar with him to laugh at one another in his presence. At a dinner given by a prominent Congressman quite early in the negotiations, Robert Tombs, a Democrat, the introducer of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in the Senate, said pompously to Elgin: "My lord, we are about to relume the torch of liberty upon the altar of slavery." The hostess, overhearing the remark, struck in with "the most silvery accents imaginable," and said: "Oh, I am so glad to hear you say that again, Senator; for I told my husband you had made use of exactly the same expression to me yesterday, and he said you would not have talked such nonsense to anybody but a woman.' "3

The conversation at the various luncheons and dinners was highly political, chiefly on the slavery question or on the rapid development of various States. Oliphant met and was impressed by the soldier-explorer Frémont-" a spare wiry man with a keen grey eye "-and by Frémont's father-in-law, the magnificent Colonel Benton of Missouri. The conversation was always keenly sustained and patriotic. In Oliphant's accounts there is the inevitable reference again and again to champagne which "irrigated " the table. He denies that the success of the negotiations was due to this festiveness, although he says that "in the hands of a skilful diplomatist that beverage is not without its value." Benton, who although not in the Oliphant, Episodes in a Life of Adventure, p. 45. 2 Oliphant, op. cit., p. 47.

Oliphant, op. cit., p. 46.